The Department for Education adopted the Gatsby Benchmarks as the benchmarks of best practice careers provision. Inspiring the Future has a network of over 45,000 employee volunteers from the world of work and as well as a wide range of classroom resources. Our latest leaflet is designed to help schools to evidence their alignment with five of the benchmarks:
Click here to read our leaflet on the Gatsby Benchmarks.
- Benchmark 3 Addressing the needs of each pupil: Our highly successful Inspiring Women campaign has long sought to tackle gender stereotypes and we have a range of inspiring women who’ve chosen career paths that might traditionally be seen as for men. We are proud of the diversity of our volunteers and schools can now search for volunteers who are keen to talk about things such as inclusion or working with a disability.
- Benchmark 4 Linking curriculum learning to careers: Schools can search for volunteers who use particular subjects in their job and invite them in to help motivate and inspire. Because our volunteers come from all walks of life, what about bringing in someone who uses STEM but as part of a theatre’s backstage production crew, or business studies but is working for the NHS?
- Benchmark 5 Encounters with employers and employees: Inspiring the Future is all about helping schools set up encounters with employers and employees and it’s the research from our team at Education and Employers that helped make the economic case for doing this. Schools can use our interactive mapping to search for local volunteers and invite them to a range of activities; and publish any events for our volunteers to express interest in giving them access to volunteers outside of their locality and those in more unusual roles and sectors. 45,000 volunteers from apprentice to CEO are available nationally.
- Benchmark 6 Experiences of workplaces: Last year we added new out-of-school activities to the menu of options for schools and volunteers to choose from. This included work place visits, work experience and job shadowing. We put the power in the hands of schools to determine what works for them and their students and our staff are here to support and provide case studies and guidance. We also regularly run showcase events at employers which schools in our network can attend.
- Benchmark 7 Encounters with further and higher education: Volunteers specify whether they took an academic route, attended university and/or are able to speak about apprenticeships. Schools can therefore search for volunteers able to talk about a wide range of career pathways. We also have lots of volunteers working at universities on the system from Sheffield Hallam to University of Exeter. Our funded projects. including the ASK Project, also provide insights into vocational routes and connections to employers and training providers.
To sign up for free or if you’d like to know more about how we can help your school evidence the Gatsby Career Benchmarks, please visit www.inspiringthefuture.org or email enquiries@inspiringthefuture.org